Francesca Campbell is the Corporate Responsibility Manager for RSA Group. Below, Francesca shares with us her experiences and accomplishments while working with RSA, including the relaunch of RSA’s CR strategy, Confident Futures, and the refresh of their community investment policy.
Please describe your role and responsibilities, how many years you have been in the company?
I am a corporate responsibility manager for RSA Insurance Group and have worked with the company for around ten months. I am part of a small CR team of three people, and we manage the CR strategy and delivery for the Group and UK operations. We are a small team but we like to think we have a big impact! Since I joined the business we have relaunched our CR strategy, Confident Futures, and refreshed our community investment policy to give more focus to our community activities.
It’s been great to be part of the journey to launch our new strategy and engage with people from our operations in Scandinavia and Canada, as well as the UK and our smaller operations in Ireland and the Middle East. We’ve been lucky enough to have engagement from really senior people in the business including our UK CEO, Scott Egan, who chairs our CR Committee for the Group and has talked publicly about his passion for driving CR in the business.
What was your background previously and where did your interest in community begin?
I have worked in the CR field for around six years, both within the insurance industry and construction. I feel I have been really lucky to be involved in some exciting projects in this time, and have set up charitable trusts and foundations, managed community and charitable partnerships, and launched some focussed campaigns on volunteering and community investment as a whole.
It’s been great to see such a huge evolution of community investment during this time and to witness it grow from something people didn’t really understand, to being something employees expect their employers to support. We have seen employees at RSA actively seek out opportunities to get involved with their local communities and drive some fantastic partnerships on a local basis.
How has your community investment program evolved at your company?
This year we have relaunched our CR strategy, Confident Futures. Our new strategy is much more integrated with the business, and looks at key issues that are material to us as an insurer such as how we manage our underwriting portfolio and our responsibility to protecting our customers data. The most exciting element of the strategy is focussed on how we can help our customers manage and protect themselves from risk, which is really linked to the core purpose of insurance.
We also recognise that as an insurer we have a strong link to our local communities, and our contribution to them is really important. Our community investment policy has been closely aligned to the LBG guidelines, and we ensure our colleagues across the business, including those outside of the UK, can engage in the same policy adoption. Through the process of refreshing the CR strategy and the community policy it was really clear that employees across the organisation consistently thought we could add a lot of value through our engagement with their local communities and wanted to be involved in the activities as much as possible.
What are the challenges you encounter in driving the sustainability agenda and how do you stay inspired?
I think it’s easy to stay inspired in a role that you genuinely love, and I am lucky to be surrounded by a team that inspire me every day. I think sometimes working in CR can feel a little bit like you are fighting a battle on your own, but I make sure I keep in touch with colleagues working in similar roles and attend events that keep me up-to-date with the latest practices. One of the best things about working in any kind of corporate responsibility role is that we are always willing to share best practice and collaborate on projects that can make improvements for the sector as a whole.
What is your biggest accomplishment or learning so far?
I was really proud to be asked along as a judge for the CSR campaign category at the CIPR Awards last year, and it was great to hear about how businesses from different industries are all taking their approach to being a responsible business so seriously. It became really clear through the judging process that businesses were both investing more in being a responsible business, and that senior management were much more brought into that investment. One business even brought their CEO along for the panel interview which really demonstrated their commitment to and understanding of their responsibility.